At Long Last, Progress On a Transportation Bill

The Senate has finally passed its first major piece of legislation in 2010, extending a 2005 transportation spending bill that was an anachronism even when it was written. The bill, which is almost certain to be passed by the House and signed into law, continues Washington’s penchant for auto-centric transportation policy, but at least it carries with it the promise we’ll see some real change this year.

Although HIRE is the Senate version of the Jobs For Main Street Act the House passed in December, it is roughly one-tenth as big and nowhere near as extensive. The Congressional Budget Office says roughly 1% of the cost (.pdf) will go towards transportation. Due to the delicate political balance in the Senate, the House is expected to pass HIRE more or less unchanged, and President Obama is expected to sign it.

So, we’re extending five-year-old legislation that places a clear emphasis on building ever more expansive, expensive highways and promoting policies that encourage auto-centric sprawl. Change we can believe in indeed.

There is some good news in all of this, and it came from the wheeling and dealing required to pass HIRE. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio and the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that deals with transportation, got the Democratic leadership to promise that it would bring a long-term transportation funding bill to the Senate floor sometime this year. Such a bill would replace SAFETEA, something the Obama Administration had earlier announced it would not seek until sometime next year.

Voinovich’s announcement provides the first real sign we could see acceptance of a replacement for SAFETEA, and it most likely will be something similar to the progressive Surface Transportation Authorization Act drafted by Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minnesota) and Rep. John Mica (R-Florida).

That 775-page bill has drawn both fanfare and trepidation and is widely considered a turning point in American transportation. The bulk of it is dedicated to maintenance rather than highway expansion and construction. It allocates $100 billion for building and expanding mass transit. Another $50 billion is earmarked for high-speed rail. The bill gives local authorities greater say in how their federal transportation dollars are spent. And our transportation policy would be legally tied to climate protection. The tab comes to at least $450 billion, twice that of SAFETEA.

Unfortunately, nobody has quite figured where that money will come from.

Getting anything through the Senate is difficult these days, and any proposed transportation bill will be inherently controversial due to its massive cost. Voinovich, among the few Republicans willing to work with Democrats on this issue, doesn’t expect the partisan bickering to let up.

Any replacement for SAFETEA will almost certainly represent the country’s largest transit investment in recent memory. Transit-watchers, environmentalists and ‘new urbanists’ hope the bill will represent a paradigm shift away from sprawl- and gridlock-inducing auto-centrism.